The Researchers

Research for these pages were done by a variety of individuals when all is said and done, but these pages were compiled by the work of two in particular.

Carol Bly

Carol is the son of Olaf Bly (yes, the boy named Sue) and he started much of the work on the Bly family tree, spending innumerable hours in libraries, court houses and county record rooms amassing what information was available about his family. Much information had been lost due to disasters like fires and Carol laid a foundation for the family to start pulling in records of where all the cousins went as the family fanned out. Many cousins were found in fact who did not know anything of their roots.

Note, Carol Bly is not the author who is in fact a woman and married to a man named Robert Bly. Yes, this created great confusion when people called for her and got his baritone voice coming across the telephone line.

James Bly

James is the adopted son of Carol. Growing up a Bly, he always knew that his biological parents had been too young to care for him. Later in life he was able to connect with them and build a very strong relationship. Following in the work of his father, he set out not only to expand on the information known about the historic roots of the Bly family but also to map the blood relation that his biological family provided. James married Emily Pearson and quickly did the same research on her family. Currently James’s biological family makes up the lions share of the database with over 2,000 people spanning eighteen centuries.

Sources

The records found here are from a variety of sources. More information about how sources were handled can be found in the research section.

  • County Death records
  • County Marriage records
  • Burial records
  • Written family records
  • Ancestry.com database records
  • Ancestry.com user contributed trees
  • FamilySearch.org (LDS) databases
  • Foreign Census Records
  • Foreign Parish, County and Church records
  • Norwegian Bygedeboken
  • Google (seriously, very useful)
  • Facebook (no joke)

If you have questions, please contact us.